Teenager allegedly sodomises journalist’s son... Biko watch and pray for your children... to avoid these long stories.

Peter Dada, Akure

An Ondo State-based journalist, Mr. Lanre Duyile, has accused the police of covering up a case of alleged sexual abuse of his eight-year-old son, Stephen, by a teenager, Olamilekan, in Ondo town, Ondo State.

Lanre and Olamilekan’s parents are neighbours.

The journalist said his son always stayed in the suspect’s apartment whenever he (Stephen) returned from school till the arrival of his wife from work.

He alleged that the boy, during the period, was abused by 17-year-old Olamilekan.

Lanre alleged that after sodomising him (Stephen), the suspect threatened that something terrible would happen if he (Stephen) told anyone.

He said, “Each time I go to work, my kids stay with them when they (his children) return from school.  Unknowingly to me, my neighbours’s son had been having carnal knowledge of my son. The suspect had been having anal sex with Stephen for a long time.

 “How I got to know was that each time I returned from work, I usually took my son out on a stroll. I realised that he was always touching people’s private parts in public. I didn’t pay much attention until someone pointed it out to me.

“So, I asked him why he did that, and he confessed that my neighbour’s son had been sleeping with him for a long time and had asked him not to tell anybody.”

Lanre said he reported at the Fagun Police Station, and the suspect was arrested.

He said he agreed to follow Olamilekan’s family to the police station after they begged him to withdraw the case.

He, however, noted that the Divisional Police Officer insisted that the matter would be charged to court.

“The DPO in my presence said they should charge the boy to court the following day, so I left. But before I got home, I discovered that they had released the boy.

“They released him without my knowledge, and I became angry and said the whole world must know what happened to my son,” he said.

Lanre accused the police of not showing interest in how a medical test would be conducted on his son, saying the DPO told him to get it done by himself.

“The suspect’s family should be responsible for the medical test of my son; they abandoned me with it. I sense a connivance with the police, particularly the DPO, in a bid to sweep the matter under the carpet,” he added.

The journalist said his boy had been traumatised by the incident, adding that he usually cried and begged to relocate to another environment.

The Public Relations Officer of the Ondo Police State Command, Mr. Femi Joseph, denied the allegations that the police were trying to cover up the case.

He said the boy’s father was not serious about the case, adding that the matter had been transferred to the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department of the command.

He said, “The offence is bailable; granting bail does not mean the suspect has been released. Even the complainant (Lanre) is not cooperating with us. We asked him to come so that we could take the boy to the hospital, but he didn’t show up. We are not covering anything; we would have charged the matter to court, but the complainant has been playing hide-and-seek. I will advise him to come; we have transferred the case to the SCIID for further investigation.”

But Lanre alleged that the state police command was not saying the truth, insisting that he was asked to sort out the medical aspect of the matter by himself.